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Abstract

Objective – This review of the literature provides a
framework for understanding the professional experiences of women library
directors in academic libraries. It focuses upon career advancement and writing
about women librarians in the United States and Canada from the 1930s to 2012.

Methods
– Databases from the disciplines of library science and
business and management, including the larger social sciences, were searched
for references to sources that dealt with career advancement and progression of
women, specifically women librarians, from the 1930s to 2012. Similarly, these
databases were also searched for sources pertaining to writing about women,
especially women in libraries. Sources were also culled from major
bibliographies on women in libraries. Articles and monographs were selected for
inclusion in the review if they reported research findings related to these
broad topics. In some cases sources from the professional literature were
included if they offered a unique perspective on lived experience.

Results
– Evidence
shows the number of women in senior leadership roles has increased over the
years. From the 1930s to the 1950s it was the natural order for men to be heads
of academic libraries, particularly major research libraries. Research studies
of the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s provide evidence of a shift from the
assumption that various personal and professional characteristics could be
identified to account for differences in the number of men and of women
recruited into senior positions in academic libraries. Despite this, women
remained vastly under-represented in director positions in academic libraries.
From the 1990s to the present, the evidence shows the number of women in senior
leadership roles increased, despite factors such as mobility, career
interruptions, or lack of advanced degrees that were traditionally identified
as limitations to career growth. While women have gained in terms of the number
of senior positions in academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada they are still
not proportionately represented. The results section concludes with a review of
sources that pertain to writing about women library leaders. This emphasizes
that the professional lives of women librarians are largely unknown, as is the
importance of their contribution to the development of libraries and
librarianship. These sources were included to highlight the critical
importance, but lack of material that speaks to writing about women and their
professional lives and experiences.

Conclusions
–
Research into the lives of women library leaders is
important because women traditionally represent 75-80% of library
professionals, yet the story of their career advancement and leadership within
librarianship is bounded by characteristics – real or perceived – that affect
their career progression. Future research focusing on collecting current data
about career advancement of women in Canadian academic libraries as well as the
contributions of women to development of libraries is suggested.

Introduction

The specific focus of
this review is women academic librarians’ career advancement and progression as
well as writing about women in libraries. It was judged important to include
the latter review of works as there is a dearth of material that speaks to writing
about women and their professional lives and experiences. The literature review
primarily includes sources from the United States and Canada from the 1930s to
2012, although there is some brief reference to sources of importance from
other countries for comparative purposes. The year 1930 was chosen as a
beginning date for the review as no major studies or surveys of library staff
could be located prior to that point in time. While the focus is on women
academic librarians, many research studies include data about male librarians
and their career advancement or in some cases the career advancement of women
librarians in general.

The story of women in
librarianship in the United States and Canada is strikingly similar and the
entrance of women into the library profession and their career advancement can
be found in chronicles or accounts of the time, primarily from the United
States and predominantly written by male librarians (Hildenbrand,
1992). In one account from C. F. McCombs (an American surveying library
services in Canada in the early 1940s), the story of women in Canadian
librarians is found in the backdrop of a recounting of staffing that
acknowledges that women’s salaries were significantly lower and opportunities
for advancement much more restricted than those of men in similar positions
(Buxton & Acland, 1998).

Beginning in the late
1960s, some U.S. researchers asked a crucial question related to career
advancement: “What is the status of women in librarianship?” (Schiller,
1979, p. 222). Both Bradley (1968) and Schiller (1969) found a similar
trend of hiring men rather than women as chief librarians in U.S. libraries. In
Canada, the closest attempt to systematically investigate the status of women
in Canadian libraries was that of librarians Sherrill Cheda
and Phyllis Yaffe, along with sociologists, Dr. Linda
Fischer and Mary Ann Wasylycia-Coe. Their research in
the early 1970s was completed with the help of a grant from the Canada Council
and the data were analyzed but the study was never published in its entirety
for reasons that are still unclear. Lack of time, interest, funds; problems in
methodology, research design, and implementation; possibly even political
suppression, have all been suggested as reasons (Futas,
1983). However, several articles were published using data from the study, and
cited widely as illustrative of the fairly low status and salaries of women in
Canadian libraries and the different career structures that existed for men and
women during the 1970s, as first detailed in the article by Cheda,
Fischer, Wasylycia-Coe, and Yaffe
(1978).Kristy (1983) examined the
status of women in librarianship on a cross-national basis. Her study
encompassed western style democracies (including the United States, Canada,
France, and New Zealand), Soviet bloc countries (Bulgaria, Cuba, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, and the USSR) and developing nations (Nigeria, India, and
Brazil). With the exception of Nigeria, librarianship was found to be a
profession in which women dominated numerically, however all countries
exhibited patterns of intra-occupational segregation which was defined as
different career tracks for men and women in the same profession. Overall, men
were found to have attained higher levels of position and salary than their female
counterparts.

The trend to hire male
library administrators began to reverse itself by 1990. Wilder (2003), who
enumerated the gender of directors of ARL libraries from 1980 to 2000,
described greater balance between the genders; the number of male directors
decreased from 84.5% in 1980 to 54.1% in 2000. Recent survey data from ARL
shows a further decline in the number of male directors to 40% in 2009
(Association of Research Libraries, 2010). Data compiled by the American
Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, which is
affiliated with over 57 unions, indicate the majority of library workers in the
United States are female while men make up less than 20% of the library
profession (AFL-CIO, Department for Professional Employees, 2009). Further,
academic (ARL and non-ARL) library directors are 47% male and public library
directors are 35% male. In Canada, a 2005 study by the 8Rs Research Team
determined that 79% of library professionals were women; 41% of senior
administrators in CARL libraries were male, as were 29% of senior
administrators in CULC (Canadian Urban Libraries Council) libraries. While more
women are heads of academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada in the
twenty-first century than in the past, the 80/20 rule of women and men making
up the profession has remained fairly constant throughout the years, and on
this proportional basis women are still under-represented at the most senior
rank of librarianship, including academic libraries.

Turning to writing
about women, there is little evidence that women have written openly about
themselves or their accomplishments, and this is true of women in the library
profession where there is little documentation or history of women’s
professional experience, including their career progression and development as
leaders. Gerda Lerner, a distinguished historian, has
written extensively about why the history of women’s experience matters
(Lerner, 1997), and in an interview about her work she states its
importance:

And now people may think that's not so very important,
but the fact is that our ideas about what is possible for the future are formed
out of our knowledge of what was possible in the past. And if we have no past,
if a group is deprived of its past, it cannot imagine a future for itself. It
can only imagine a future for the people that it thinks have done the historic
work in the past, and that's men. (Lerner, n.d.)

Thus, reviewing the
literature and understanding the past is timely as the current generation of
women who aspire to senior administrative and leadership roles in academic
libraries prepare themselves for the future.

Aims

This review of the
literature provides a framework for understanding the past experiences of women
library directors. It focuses upon career advancement and writing about women
librarians, almost exclusively in the United States and Canada from the 1930s
to 2012. Why is this important? As the current generation of library directors
moves into retirement, women library leaders will look to the experiences of
their predecessors as they prepare to assume senior management positions and
senior roles. While they will find evidence of change in career patterns of
male and female librarians, they will also appreciate that these changes are of
relatively recent date and that hiring trends and the status of women in
libraries cannot be taken for granted. Finally, the literature review will be
concluded by suggestions for areas for further research with a focus on women
academic librarians in Canada in particular.

Methods

Databases from the
disciplines of library science and business and management, including the
larger social sciences, were searched for references to sources that dealt with
career advancement and progression of women, specifically women librarians in
academic libraries. These databases included: Library and Information Science
Source (EBSCO), LISA: Library and Information Science Abstracts, Academic
Search Complete, Business Source Complete, ABI Inform Global, CBCA Complete,
and ERIC (EBSCO).

Additionally, it is critical to acknowledge a primary
source of works about women in librarianship, the bibliographies On Account of Sex: An Annotated Bibliography
on the Status of Women in Librarianship, published from 1977 to 2002, and
its forerunner The Role of Women in
Librarianship, 1897-1976: The Entry, Advancement and Struggle for Equalization
in our Profession provide descriptions of works important to the literature
review. As Maack (2002) noted, historical and
biographical works make up a large part of the entries and “we now have
bibliographic access to over 120 years of writings that vividly demonstrate
that there have always been women in librarianship who were not silent or
complacent or lacking in ambition” (p. 242). These bibliographies were also
scanned for works important to the topics of career advancement and writing
about women librarians.

Although the emphasis
of the literature review is upon women in academic libraries, there are relatively
few references that pertain solely to academic librarianship, so works on
women’s careers and leadership in libraries generally were examined as
important source materials and included as appropriate. As stated in the
introduction, this review primarily includes sources from the United States and
Canada with some brief reference to sources of importance from other countries
for comparative purposes. Studies were selected for inclusion if they provided
research data that added to the discussion of career progression of women in
librarianship or were helpful in outlining the thinking about women in
libraries and their status in the profession during the time period in which
they were written. Most works receive brief treatment with a basic outline of their
results or conclusions, unless they provide evidence of a change in the number
of women in administrative positions in academic libraries or add substantially
to the discussion of personal characteristics and professional qualifications
of women.

Results

The results of the
literature review fall into the two categories identified as the objectives of
the review. First, the section on career progression of women in academic
libraries highlights demographic profiles and professional characteristics and
qualifications of female librarians as well as issues such as mobility and
career interruptions. Evidence shows the number of women in senior leadership
roles has increased over the years. However, women are still underrepresented
today in leadership positions in academic libraries. Second, the results
section concludes with a review of sources that pertain to writing about women
library leaders. The noted dearth of writing about women librarians emphasizes
that the professional lives of women librarians are largely unknown, as is the
importance of their contribution to the development of libraries and
librarianship. These sources were included to highlight the critical importance
of but lack of material that speaks to writing about women and their professional
lives and experiences.

Career Progression of
Women in Academic Libraries

Studies of career
progression of women in academic libraries vary, but most focus on demographic
and personal characteristics and professional qualifications of women
librarians. Bradley (1968) defines personal characteristics as factors that
differentiate librarians from one another but have little or no relationship to
the ability to perform in a job, and qualifications as those things that
distinguish librarians from each other and have an assumed relationship to
performing well. The personal characteristics of job mobility and career
interruption are ones that are often identified as issues and commonly
highlighted for discussion as these are factors most closely associated with
women’s careers. Most often the data or results of the research are described
in career profiles and examined for career patterns that have determined
women’s professional lives. In conjunction with data about women,
characteristics and qualifications of male librarians are often gathered and
used to compare and contrast, so may illuminate the differences men and women
experience in career progression or advancement in academic libraries.

From the 1930s to the 1950s in the U.S. and
Canada: Limited prospects for women

Irvine (1985) reviewed
the writing on gender in academic library administration beginning in the 1930s
with Randall’s (1932) acknowledgement that the administration of college
libraries was primarily a male exercise. Alvarez (1938), Williamson (1939), and
McDiarmid (1942) pointed to the importance of
advanced degrees and experience in administration for recruitment into senior
positions in academic libraries. While Alvarez argued women have just as many
opportunities to become chief librarians as men, both Williamson and McDiarmid acknowledged that prospects were much more
limited for women. O’Brien (1983), who reviewed a number of articles published
in the library literature from 1941-1950, concluded that “The fact that men
were preferred as administrators was acknowledged both within and without the
library profession during the 1940s” (p. 60). Various reasons were advanced for
this, including Bannister’s assessment (as cited in O’Brien, 1983) that women
were unable to handle prolonged periods of responsibility.

Samuel Rothstein, a
noted Canadian library educator, commented upon the tenor of professional life
in Canadian libraries in the 1930s and 1940s and recalled that:

Yes, most of us were women (perhaps nine out of ten
professionals), but this marked disproportion, which was certainly one of the
most salient and influential features of the library community, was also one of
the least discussed subjects. Oh, one heard adjurations about the desirability
of getting more men into the profession but scarcely a word about women being
passed over in appointment to high-level positions. It was as though most women
librarians saw themselves as natural subordinates and their careers as
temporary jobs to be held only until marriage. (1990, p. 6)

As Rothstein (1990) concluded, “In other words, when
almost the only alternatives were nursing, social work, or teaching,
librarianship found it easy to recruit women of very superior ability who were
willing to dedicate themselves to demanding jobs for small practical rewards”
(p. 7).

In the 1950s, Schick
(1950) and Harvey (1958) both observed the tendencies for women chief
librarians to be clustered in smaller academic institutions, to be promoted
from within, and to lack both academic degrees and job mobility. It was also
common for these women to be single and younger than male chief librarian
colleagues and have fewer years of professional library experience.

Examining the writing
and research over this time period provides evidence that women’s
administrative and leadership abilities were often recognized, but given
greatest credence under specific circumstances. Career advancement for women,
who were the majority in libraries, was bounded by the size of the
responsibilities, usually also determined by the size of the institution, by
job mobility, and by years of education and experience. It was the natural
order for men to be heads of academic libraries, particularly major research
libraries, and the male minority presumably advanced the careers of other men.

The 1960s to 1980s in the U.S. and Canada:
“Who are these women?”

In the 1970s, Cohn
(1976) and Parsons (1976) both retrospectively reviewed the recruitment of
directors into large research libraries. Parsons, who compared the number of
women directors in 1958 to that of 1973, found that five female directors had
been recruited during that period. Cohn’s work, which spanned 1933 to 1973,
identified two women appointed between 1934 and 1969 and five between 1970 and
1973. All of these director appointments were internal. Wong and Zubatsky (1983), who studied the demographic and
professional characteristics of first-time appointed college and university
library directors between the years 1970 to 1980, found women were most often
appointed at smaller institutions. Since they tended to be unmarried, it was
presumed they were more mobile. When Morrison (1969) surveyed academic library
administrators he found female chief librarians had less academic training, but
also found there was not a great difference in job mobility of male and female
chief librarians. Men and women differed on two additional characteristics,
however; male chief librarians tended to enter the professional later than
their female counterparts and they tended to be published more frequently.
Bradley (1968), in his study of 100 heads of large U.S. academic and public
libraries, noted there was a definite tendency for men to replace women at this
position level, reaching its zenith among large academic library directors, all
of whom were men. Schiller’s (1969) work on academic librarians does not
separate the characteristics of chief librarians from the population of over
2,200 librarians she studied, but does describe how the tendency to hire male
librarians to fill administrative positions had become more apparent over the
last few decades. She found that as women directors retired men were hired to
take their places. She also noted that men apparently have greater job
mobility. Schiller’s work (1979) on the status of female librarians, with
respect to salary, position level, and career advancement, “has become a
benchmark against which to measure women’s progress” (Maack,
2002, p. 244).

The question of
mobility in job seeking and its influence on career advancement tended to
dominate discussions of career progression. In a large scale study of American
Library Association members, almost 2,000 respondents provided career and
personal data. The data indicated that overall career patterns of male and
female members were relatively similar (Heim, 1983). Women, however, were twice
as likely to report geographic location as a factor in accepting positions and
career advancement was often related to job mobility. Studies by Metz (1978),
Martin (1979), and Maag (1981) provided data on
recruitment of academic library directors, job mobility and advancement. Metz,
who examined succession patterns of academic library directors, found external
male candidates were most often recruited into academic libraries. If women
were hired they were most often internal candidates. He speculated this may be
due in part to their more limited geographic mobility. Martin’s findings did
not support a statistically significant difference in the mobility rates of men
and women in ARL libraries, although there were important predictor variables
for position level (e.g., career work continuity and working in a large number
of libraries). Maag found that appointments of
academic library directors typically went to external male candidates and woman
were more likely to be internal appointees.

In 1983, Robinson, who
studied mobility and career patterns in a large population of female and male
academic librarians, found a statistically significant relationship between
mobility and position level. Her research also showed that men gained greater
position levels through mobility, and even when men and women were moving in
order to advance their careers, rather than for personal or family reasons, men
achieved greater position advancement. Robinson examined career interruptions
and leaves of both men and women in order to determine the influence of work
interruptions on careers. While women more frequently took leaves from work,
and these were more usually personal or family related leaves, there was no
statistically significant difference in position advancement between women who
had interrupted their careers and those who did not. Robinson concluded neither
the issue of job mobility nor career interruption could be held responsible for
the differences in career progression of men and women in academic
librarianship.

Fennell (1983), referenced Fairchild’s (1904) oft quoted query about
whether women would ever hold the highest administrative positions in libraries
to note that Fairchild’s question was still open. She asked a follow-up
question of her own, “The most important positions of leadership and administration
in the academic-library profession are reserved for men, or, at best, include
only a small proportion of women. Yet, who are these women?” (p. 209). Fennell
explored personal and professional backgrounds, education and training, the
role of work in their lives, and factors that influenced career achievement to
develop a composite career profile of 11 (from a total of 17) women directors
of the 164 largest academic libraries in the United States. The women
administrators were asked what recommendations they would have for women
interested in academic library director positions. Their advice was summarized
as “get an advanced degree, work hard, be mobile, and choose your job because
of the person for whom you will be working rather than for any other reason”
(p. 239). The career profile of these women did not necessarily exemplify their
advice; they believed they had worked hard and been in the right place at the
right time but for the most part had not been deliberate in planning their
careers.

At the same time that
Fennell was examining the career profiles of female library directors, Moran
(1983) was studying the comparative career progression of over 400 male and
female academic library administrators who had been either assistant or associate
library directors ten years previously. She explored personal characteristics,
professional qualifications, and the relationship of these factors to having
attained a director’s position. There were distinctive differences by gender.
For women there was no statistically significant relationship between personal
characteristics such as marital status and number of geographic relocations and
becoming a director. Men, however, were much more likely to have attained a
director position if they were married with children and had made a number of
moves to assume administrative positions. Similarly, professional
qualifications showed little influence in determining whether or not the women
in the study group became directors, but did effect whether men did. Even when
examining types of academic libraries, from college to large research
libraries, these same patterns held true. Moran concluded that the personal and
professional factors that are commonly used to explain why women do not attain
the director position in academic libraries are not related to success in
achieving that role. An explanation lies in the different career patterns of
men and women in academic librarianship. Male librarians who achieve advanced
degrees, participate in professional associations, and are published in the
professional literature are likely to become directors in academic libraries;
women following the same career pattern would not be as likely to attain a
directorship. The only variable likely to influence the success of women in achieving
the director’s position was whether they were an internal candidate for the
position, having been an assistant or associate director in the same
institution. Several years earlier, Metz (1978) had reported this same pattern
of internal succession for women – a pattern that is much less likely for men.

It is worthy of note
that the advice given to women interested in academic library directorships by
the female directors in the Fennell study is similar to the male career pattern
Moran (1983) describes. Olsgaard (1984) developed a
set of attributes of the successful academic librarian by studying academic
librarians listed in Who’s Who in Library and Information Services
published in 1982 and provided a composite of the successful academic
librarian. Among other attributes, the successful academic librarian is most
likely to be a male administrator working in a large academic library. Olsgaard stressed that these composite characteristics are
not necessarily the most desirable and that a set of standards for success
would be useful for the profession.

Several studies
published in the 1980s examined personal and professional characteristics of
male and female librarians. They found few differences other than the number of
men and women recruited into senior positions in academic libraries. Swisher
and DuMont (1984) studied the professional
qualifications of over 300 academic librarians in an effort to ascertain how
these factors influenced attainment of administrative positions. They
identified tangible job qualifications (educational background, previous
experience, publications, and professional activity) and compared men and women
to show that even with almost identical qualifications men were more likely to
advance to administrative positions. Irvine (1985) examined the characteristics
of directors, associate directors, and assistant directors of the 99 academic
libraries that were members of ARL in 1980. Of the 371 individuals identified,
256 men and 115 women answered survey questions about demographic
characteristics and career patterns that could have influenced their attainment
of administrative positions. Overall, Irvine found that women displayed many of
the characteristics of their male colleagues and far fewer gender related
differences than expected. Women, on average, were younger, had worked fewer
years in libraries, and had only half the administrative experience as men in
comparable positions. Irvine attributed these differences to the passing of
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, coupled with affirmative action
programs, as having given women access to administrative posts and increased
the number of women in administrative positions. The enactment of federal laws
and regulations likely encouraged women to apply for administrative posts, as
women perceived that positions were accessible to them. Irvine (1985) also
pointed to ARL data that indicated that there were no women directors and only
16% of associate and assistant director positions filled by women in 1970, but
by 1976/1977 11% of ARL directors and 30% of associate and assistant directors
were women.

In 1989, Moran
replicated the research on career progression she had done some ten years earlier.
She found there had been significant changes in the career progression patterns
of female academic library administrators. The personal characteristics of male
and female library directors remained unchanged, but professional
characteristics showed statistically significant differences. In the 1983
study, neither educational level nor professional activities were associated
with female success in career advancement, and internal succession was the
norm. By 1989, professional characteristics of advanced degrees, publications,
professional activity, and mobility were associated with success of both men
and women.

Looking specifically
at the Canadian context from the 1960s to the 1980s, several studies are
illustrative of the trends found in the U.S. professional library community. In
1974, Cheda, Fischer, Wasylycia-Coe,
and Yaffe examined the career patterns of Canadian
librarians. The research group broke up before the study was published in its
entirety (Futas, 1983), but the group later produced
a study which examined salary differentials of male and female librarians (Cheda, Fischer, Wasylycia-Coe,
& Yaffe, 1978). Wasylycia-Coe
(1981) also profiled Canadian chief librarians by gender, analyzing data
collected in the larger study. She compared male and female chief librarians on
a number of career characteristics and social background variables and noted
that male and female heads of libraries were fairly equally represented in
small to large public libraries and college libraries, whereas women in special
libraries outnumbered male heads almost two to one. There were, however, no
women heading large university libraries in the sample data. She also found men
were much more likely to have obtained a first job as chief librarian, and it
was more usual for a man than a woman to become a chief librarian early in his
career. The salary and advancement findings that Cheda,
Fischer, Wasylycia-Coe, and Yaffe
(1978) first noted were echoed by Plate and Siegel (1979) in their study of
Ontario librarians. Almost 10 years after the Cheda,
Fischer, Wasylycia-Coe, and Yaffe
study, Harris and Monk (1986) surveyed Masters of Library Science graduates
from the University of Western Ontario and undertook a “prestige analysis” of
professional tasks and work settings to find that men were most often
performing higher status tasks, such as administrative tasks, more of the time
than were women, and that men were paid more, on average, than women in every
setting except for community college libraries. In 1987, Bowron
tabulated the number of men heading large Canadian university and public
libraries in 1948 and in 1986, and found that there had been an increase in the
male majority.

Overall, the career
progression of Canadian library directors is similar to that of their U.S. counterparts.
Harris and Tague (1989) explored the career paths of
26 male and female directors in academic, government, and large public
libraries. Noting work done by U.S. researchers such as Moran, the Canadian
investigators studied whether similar career patterns might be found in
Canadian librarianship. By and large the findings were similar: male directors
did not have higher degrees in education, higher publication levels, or higher
professional activity than female directors, and mobility was not found to be a
factor in career advancement. Deschatelets and
Saint-Marseille (1991) reported similar findings in their study of directors of
large francophone libraries in Canada.

Summing up to the
1990s, the research studies of the decades from the 1960s to the 1980s provided
evidence of a shift from the assumption that various personal and professional
characteristics could be identified to account for differences in the number of
men and of women recruited into senior positions in academic libraries. Overall,
women began to display many of the characteristics of their male colleagues and
far fewer gender related differences than expected. Despite this, they remained
vastly underrepresented in director positions in academic libraries.

The 1990s and beyond in the U.S. and Canada:
“Is the revolution over?”

Kirkland (1997), who
surveyed 135 women academic library directors, identified the variables
participants had found most important in their career advancement. While
variables such as mobility, academic qualifications, service in professional
organizations, and tenacity and perseverance were most commonly chosen,
mentoring was ranked most highly in importance for career success and attaining
the director position. Kirkland also asked women librarians to identify
anti-mentoring or deprivation behavior, which can be defined as experiences
that discourage women from achieving administrative positions. Deprivation or
discouraging behaviors can occur in the areas of responsibility, information,
recognition and approval, and solidarity (pitting women against one another).
Deprivation behavior, which Kirkland defined as a subtle form of gender bias,
discourages female ambition and supports the glass ceiling many women
experience in their career progression.

Moran, Leonard, and
Zellers (2009), who analyzed the academic library workforce, concluded parity
between men and women administrators had not been accomplished, but women
holding directorships increased from 2% in 1972 to almost 61% in 2004. They
attributed the change to the high turnover of director positions over the
period between 1994 and 2004 and the number of women who replaced men as they
vacated the director role. Encouraging as these results are, they noted that
this trend can still be improved if women are to be as proportionally
represented in academic administrator positions as they are in the profession.
This highlighting of the issue of parity is in response to the question posed
by Deyrup (2004) when she asked “Is the revolution
over?” (p. 249). Deyrup, noting the impressive gain
in top administrator positions women had made over the past thirty years,
determined that both salary and professional parity had been achieved. However,
she also acknowledged that these gains must be maintained and women must be
encouraged to enter and then be supported in senior positions.

In Canada, a 2005 study by the 8Rs Research Team
looked at variables of recruitment, remuneration, retention, retirement,
reaccreditation, rejuvenation, repatriation, and restructuring throughout the
Canadian library workforce. Although the study did not look specifically at
career advancement of women or men, demographic and position data were gathered
for all librarians who reported in the practitioner’s survey – over 4,697
individuals. As a follow up to the study, Sorensen (2012) reanalyzed these data
to provide further insights into the demographics of almost 600 senior
administrators in Canadian libraries, including 151 chief librarians or
directors in academic libraries. While noting that very little research
attention had been paid to senior positions, she concluded that

Notably, however, females comprise a smaller
portion of CARL, other academic, and CULC senior administrators, while other
public, government, non-profit, and school senior administrators are slightly
more likely to be female than their professional librarian counterparts. Hence,
while female representation is higher in the library sector than in most other
occupations at all career levels, women are less likely to be found heading up
the largest libraries in the country. (Sorensen, 2012, p. 53)

In examining sources, primarily from the 1930s to the
2000s on the career advancement of women librarians in academic libraries, the
evidence shows the number of women in senior leadership roles has increased,
despite the personal characteristics and professional qualifications such as
mobility, career interruptions, and lack of advanced degrees that were
traditionally identified as limitations to career growth. However, women are
still underrepresented in leadership positions in academic libraries and this
picture should also be viewed within the larger sociocultural context of
women’s advancement in the workplace. While the pace of career advancement for
all women accelerated, particularly during the 1970s to 1990s, there is some
suspicion that it might now be slowing. For example, in 2007 Eagly and Carli reminded readers
that women still cannot assume that they will find gender equality in the
workplace:

Contemporary women still face many challenges,
especially in relation to male-dominated leadership roles. They must be brave,
resourceful, creative, and smart to be successful, because they can face the
most elaborate of labyrinths on their path to leadership. (p. 199)

In the same article, Eagly
and Carli also discuss how the march towards equality
now shows a much slower pace. Women who aspire to leadership positions in
libraries should be aware that the pace of change and acceptance of women in
leadership roles continues to be slow, perhaps even slackening, and they will
continue to find barriers and obstacles to surmount in attaining the careers
and leadership roles that they desire.

Writing about Women Library Leaders

Writing about women’s
lives, the female experience, has received a lot of attention from scholars
over the past quarter century. Seminal works by Heilbrun
(1988) and Bateson (1990) discussed the discordance between the published or
public life and the private lives of women, and how most women have not written
openly about themselves or their accomplishments. Similarly, biographies often
describe women’s lives in ways that are not based on female truth or
experiences, but contrive to be in keeping with the societal norms of the day.

Works that describe
women’s lives as librarians can be found in the professional literature. Many
of these are biographies, interviews or brief descriptions of women’s
professional lives that were compiled so that names and achievements would not
be lost once the memory of an individual or an institution had faded. Grotzinger (1983b) examined a number of biographical
studies of librarians to find that biographies of male librarians far outnumber
the biographies of female librarians. She concluded that this dearth of writing
about women librarians is recognition denied and “removes the evidence that
would permit a solid assessment of their roles and contributions” (p. 373).
This evidence is critical to decide whether their contribution was notable, and
if women can be determined to be leaders in their times. Grotzinger
(1983a) also maintained that one of the perils of biographical studies of women
librarians is the lack of apparent methodological rigor and critical analysis,
as a great many of these biographical works fall into the classification of
non-scholarly tributes. She examined these works as well as theses,
dissertations, and collective scholarly biographies, and concluded there are a
number of critical flaws in biographical works about women, some of them due to
lack of primary source materials and failure to cite sources.

Hildenbrand (1992) examined
library history (defined as the body of published historical writing) and
women’s place in history to reveal: “From their leadership positions men have
shaped not only the profession but also the writing of its history” (p. 19).
She refers to the difficulty of understanding the experiences of early women
librarians as they “left fewer personal records than any other similarly educated
women of the period” (p. 24). Hildenbrand decries
that histories of librarianship that omit women are still being published and
points to the work of Grotzinger (1983a) as critical
to understanding what the lives of women librarians were like and the
centrality of their contribution to library development. As Hildenbrand
(1996) pointed out, it is only through gendered history or an understanding of
the position of women librarians in relation to their male counterparts that
one can approach larger questions such as inequality in the workplace. And,
women’s individual and collective biographies must not only attempt to redress
the paucity of writing about women librarians but should “present an invaluable
picture of early library women as active agents, choosing their work and making
valuable contributions in the face of enormous obstacles” (p. 14). One such
contemporary work is Fitzpatrick’s Mrs.Magavero:
A History Based on the Life of an Academic Librarian (2007). The work on Magavero, who was the first female librarian at a Maritime
college, is set firmly within the professional writings and events of her time
(1949-2003). Her experience of working within a male-dominated organization for
low pay and marginal status is described in her own voice:

Now in those days, Fort Schuyler was really a male
bastion, and I was coming on as the only professional woman. They had women as
clerks, but I was the only professional woman. And the library was manned by
the director, Mr. Hoverter, and I was the only other
professional person in the library at the time. (p. 66)

She continues:

And here I am, with much more education, and I
was hired as a clerk. Now I questioned that of the librarian at the time, you
know. I thought, “Why should I be in the clerical line?” He said, “Well there’s
nothing I could do, you know this is the way it is,” and you know I accepted
it. (p. 67)

It was not until 1961
or 1962 that Mrs. Magavero was put into a
professional position. As Fitzpatrick (2007) concludes, “The library world has
come a long way since 1949, but still has a long way to go” (p. 60).

The stories that
people tell about themselves or are told by others are powerful because they
not only situate the individual in time and within context or situation but
also speak to the manner in which individuals develop understanding or make
meaning of their experience. Mrs. Magavero reflected
upon her experience in terms of striving for acceptance and seeking recognition
of her competency in an organization that was dominated by men in positions of
power and influence. Her story is compelling for the reader because it offers a
firsthand account of the struggle that many women have faced in making and
advancing a career in academic libraries.

Discussion

Research into the lives
of women library leaders is important because women traditionally represent
75-80% of library professionals and yet the story of their career advancement
and leadership within librarianship is bounded by characteristics – real or
perceived – that affect their career progression. Analysis of the works
reviewed shows that the research and writing that exists pertains primarily to
the United States, although a few Canadian studies are noted and they show
findings similar to those of U.S. studies. Few studies of women’s career
advancement in libraries exist outside of the U.S. and Canada.

Clearly, additional
research is needed. Today there is a generation of women library directors who
came up through the ranks of academic libraries and were overwhelmingly led by
male librarians, and who may have been perceived as less “desirable” than their
male colleagues for promotion into senior positions (Kronus
& Grimm, 1971). Nonetheless, these women attained senior roles and account
in some part for the reversal in the number of males and females in
administrative positions in major libraries. The current generation of women
directors is likely to have learned important lessons about the effect that
being female has had on their careers. These women are also likely to retire
within the next 5 to 10 years, with little documentation of the issues and
challenges that shaped their experience. As positions as director or chief
librarian become vacant, female candidates will be interested and competitive
in recruitment into these positions, and it is likely that they can learn from
the experiences of their predecessors. It is also very likely that women who
aspire to senior administrative and leadership roles in academic libraries will
encounter some of the same issues and obstacles to career advancement and
leadership development as the current generation of women academic library
directors did in the past. Just as Lerner (1997) advocated for all women and
their history, female librarians should have the opportunity to understand the
historical role of women in librarianship and celebrate the accomplishments of
these women as a prelude to defining their own futures as library leaders.

Looking specifically
at the Canadian scene, few research studies provide a baseline of data upon
which further studies of career progression or leadership development in
academic libraries can be grounded. Future research in Canada should focus on
collecting current data about career advancement of women in academic
libraries. Additionally, few biographical works about women librarians exist,
and the contributions of women in building Canadian libraries should be
documented and acknowledged.

The Future of Human Resources in Canadian
Libraries by the 8Rs Research
Team is the sole comprehensive source of general demographic and human
resources data for Canadian libraries. However, other than the percentage of
senior administrators by sex and by library sector, the original 8Rs data were
not comprehensive or exhaustive enough to provide a more detailed profile for
males and females in Canadian academic libraries. Ideally, the 8Rs data should
be updated on a regular basis, with particular attention paid to analyzing data
by sex and potentially by the other three groups identified in Canadian equity
legislation. This would provide a firm foundation of demographic data on which
to base further study of women in academic libraries and of all sectors.

Limitations of this
review include inclusion of only studies that dealt specifically with career
advancement as well as writing about women in libraries. In doing so, many
studies and much writing about the sociocultural forces that were shaping the
lives of women in the workforce in the 1960s to the 1980s have not been
acknowledged or represented, and yet these forces have influenced the choices
that women in libraries have made about their careers. Neither does the
literature review capture any studies reporting changes to the operating
environment of libraries and the internal changes, such as unionization, that
were bred in the tumult of social change. Libraries as organizations have not
been immune from societal change and influences, and any resulting legislation
or policy, as well as the changing role and status of women within library
organizations, has been the subject of debate and question by both
administrators and library staff. Although over time established attitudes and
behaviors regarding women librarians no longer seemed appropriate, in some
instances the career aspirations and advancement of women was still met with
ignorance, discrimination, and opposition. And, as Eagly
and Carli (2007) remind us, this can still happen
today; gender equality in the workplace cannot be assumed. Additionally, the
review does not include research about career development of women in general,
career aspirations, or the development of skills or competencies that support
leadership growth of the individual. All of these elements are useful in
understanding the context for career advancement and writing about women in
libraries, but this review was not designed to be comprehensive enough to
reflect overall context.

Conclusions

A review of the
literature regarding career advancement and writing about women revealed that
overall women have gained in terms of the number of senior positions in
academic libraries in the U.S and Canada, although they are still not
proportionately represented. Noteworthy studies described the demographic
profiles and professional characteristics and qualifications of women
librarians and their significance and change over time. The dearth of writing
about women librarians is highlighted to emphasize that the professional lives
of women librarians are largely unknown as is the importance of their
contribution to the development of libraries and librarianship, whether or not
they achieved senior administrative positions. Future research focusing on
collecting current data about career advancement of women in academic libraries
as well as the contributions of women to development of libraries is suggested.

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